Tim's Blog

Over at the newly arrived 2gether08 website Steve Bridger has been musing about what Fair Trade 2.0 might look like.

The FAIRTRADE Mark changes peoples behavior by giving them information about the products they are buying. When you buy a product with a FAIRTRADE Mark on you know that the producer has been paid a fair price for their work, alongside a social premium to be invested in development projects in their community. But the Fair Trade movement is not just about changing people's buying decisions in the abstract - it is also about re-forging the connections between producer and consumer that get lost in a globalised market-driven world.

Whilst my jar of Fairtrade Coffee might provide me with a story about one of the producers involved in the co-op that made it - the social web could do a lot more - and that could bring on Fair Trade 2.0.

A common checklist for planning an event or promoting a new project:

• Think up a name [CHECK]
• Design a logo and brand [CHECK]
• Find someone to print t-shirts with the logo on [CHECK]
• Check that the t-shirts are made with fairtrade cotton....... um, check?

When I started campaigning for Oxford University to only sell ethically traded clothing back in 2003, we had to dig around and research a lot to find out how to source ethical clothing. The FAIRTRADE Mark for cotton didn't exist then - and choosing ethical clothes meant a six-week lead time and a lot of extra cost.